The enthusiastic approval of Adolf Hitler is scarcely the kind of endorsement most authors would want, and the writings of the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz (1780–1831) certainly had that. His On War was on the list of the top one hundred wholesome titles booksellers in Nazi Germany were supposed to carry. Hailing Clausewitz as the prophet of Absolute War, the Nazi warlord would pore over him at night in the study of the Berghof in the Bavarian Alps with its sign ordering ABSOLUTE SILENCE. He would quote him endlessly at his generals, and, when things started to come apart, Hitler used Clausewitz “as a sort of spiritual talisman,” in the words of the historian Peter Baldwin. Finally, in his political testament, Hitler urged his countrymen to keep on fighting, “true to the creed of the great Clausewitz.”

After the war, an understandable Clausewitz fatigue set in: the German general Gunther Blumentritt stated that letting the military read On War was like “allowing a child to play with a razor blade.” And to this day, many Germans still regard Clausewitz as tainted.

But as Donald Stoker makes clear in Clausewitz: His Life and Work, Hitler had no exclusive ownership claims on Clausewitz.1 Having distilled the essence of war, devoid of moral considerations, Clausewitz is an equal opportunity theorist: dictatorships and democracies alike have found his insights useful. Lenin thought so, and so did Mao.

Colonel Harry Summers’s On Strategychanneled him